Children At Play
by Harmonic Friction
Summary: After years of therapy, Sid forgets why he should be scared.


Author's Note: Here's a short story three years in the making. I do not own _Toy Story_, Pixar does. And the views in this story and on the character of Sid are mine- not to be in any way affiliated with Pixar.

Warning: Rape/incest themes, foul language, disturbing content, teen alcohol.

CHILDREN AT PLAY

* * *

Fresh out of detention for the third time in a week, the eleven year old boy walks down the hallway of the middle school and feels big. Only the worst kids in his sixth grade class get sent to the middle school detention, and even some of the worst from his own school tremble in their little sneakers just thinking about the Big Kid school. He doesn't care. Not much scares him. But he knows he scares other people. This is his fourth detention. Today, it's because he kept spitting on his little sister's friend Chloe. He spit on her and spit on her until she started crying. He wanted to spit in her mouth but he kept missing. The principal asked him if he was an unhappy boy. He licked his braces and observed the D.A.R.E. poster on the wall, trying not to laugh.

He boasts about not being sickened by anything. Once he went into the library and the librarian said: "Sid Phillips! I've got my eye on you!" so he feigned innocence and acted real good. He found a very thick book about serial killers and read it standing up in the adult aisle, rooted to the floor. When he plopped that book down on the counter, the librarian looked afraid like he did not want Sid to take home the book, but he sighed and stamped it. Sid sat up all night with that book and memorized it. The best part of it was that it was non-fiction.

His room is a dark jungle of trash, sweltering and smelling, and Barbie dolls lie around naked and abused. His conquests. Their heads are screaming on his shelves, mutilated and melted. Once Sid pushed a real girl up against the brick wall of the play yard and breathed her in really deep. She had blue eyes and blond hair and all she said was "Mama! Mama!" Sometimes he thinks that could have been a dream. He knows how to use it all—the drill, the saw, the sticky globs of glue. He's a genius in the way that Ted Bundy was a genius, if you're able to think that way. He fantasizes about plucking hair out of someone's head for hours and hours. Death metal plays on the stereo. It is 1995 and Kurdt Cobain is a hero, and suicide is just a word. "Black Hole Sun" on MTV is Sid's religion. The screwed up faces of the happy adults is what this neighborhood is about.

Then, one day on a sunny weekend, something happens. It starts out regularly- two plastic, smiling toys to torture in the backyard, but it ends with Sid falling over himself and feeling like he's a very small boy and might "go" in his pants, right there in the daylight, right there. He hears voices calling to him, and he sees things that are not real. Creatures rise out of the sandbox, heads spin, and he cries and he cries. When his screaming that he has carried inside the house wakes his father from the alcohol-induced slumber, Sid is taken to the hospital, because that's how they fix things in the Phillips home. But the doctors don't quite know what's made him shake so badly, what's made him utter every secret: _serial killer-snake in my boot- Hannah in the dark- sorry. _His file gets a question mark, and they dope him up good.

Flash forward one year and they don't talk about that anymore, not about the counseling sessions, nor about his new way of life. The dolls they could salvage were put back together and taken to thrift stores, weapons hidden, radio volume turned down.

And then the spaceman and the cowboy are a figment of a sick imagination, of a child. Sid is now fifteen, still lanky but with a better skateboard and standing at almost six feet, that black buzz cut of the old times grown out, still short. He's hardened with age, got that look of youth in rebellion, though always slightly stoned. The girls are like big dolls, and he goes through them like matches. Hannah has outgrown Barbies and stays in her room, watching children's programming with eyes big as saucers while Sid introduces long legged goth girls to the seedy mattress in the room next to hers.

Cristina is different. She is good-looking to Sid in that big breasted, long haired, rave bracelet way he likes, a pacifier around her neck, but she's different. She believes in something her parents taught her—"sex after marriage". It's the first time he's ever heard a metalhead girl say something like that so he thought it was a joke when she initially told him. But it's the truth. He goes to the movies with her, knowing he can change her mind. When the 'rents are out one weekend, Sid invites Cristina over and tells Hannah to stay in her room. Cristina puts her black backpack on Sid's dresser, and rummages around in it.

"Oh my shit," she says, laughing, the drawn on tearstains appearing funny in moments like this. "Bear Bear. He belongs to my sister, she must have…" She trails off, knowing somewhere internally that Sid doesn't hang with her to hear what she has to say.

Popping open a beer, Sid turns to look. Bear Bear is a stuffed toy, a black eyed little teddy peering out of his girlfriend's bag. "Oh," he says. "Funny." He knows he might have freaked out about this a few summers ago, but it's been such a long time. He can't even remember why or how. It's just a stupid thing. "Want one?" he asks, and she nods yes. They drink in silence for a few seconds, until she moves closer and starts to kiss him. This brave maneuver makes it clear to him that what her parents have taught her is bull, and that she's ready. He kisses her back for awhile, then urges her to sit down on the floor, where they make out some more.

He bites her lip, his strong teeth freed of those troublesome braces, and she cries out in either a good or bad way, but it's all the same. But when he starts to push himself on top of her, she pulls away and says: "Hey."

"Don't be weird," he says. "It's all right."

The radio plays a new hit by Korn. Next door over, they can hear Hannah mindlessly watching television. Scud whines and scratches at the door. He kisses her again, softer, and then puts his legs on either side of her body. "Sid!" she says. "Sid!" But her screams are _Mama, Mama, _and his hand just wants to go down. After all, what did she wear all of that makeup for?

But then, he stops. Something has fallen onto his back. He rears up and snatches whatever it is. It is Bear Bear. The beady little black eyes glare at him, glassy, shiny, and for a split second, the real world is saying _the way you pushed her down, that made the stupid thing fall on you from the dresser _but, no. Sid knows what really happened. Even years of repression and drugs and therapy that the school paid for can't make him forget. He knows it's all in his head, but that doesn't stop him from shouting, jumping up, quaking. Cristina kicks him squarely in the stomach, shoves him into the metal of the old bed. There are tears in his eyes from the pain but all he can see is those beady eyes, staring at him evilly.

He's crying when she gives him a final blow, says something about the cops. He can barely see through the tears. But when he knows she's gone, he sits up on the bed, and around him have appeared a million little eyes, and noses and mouths.

* * *


End file.
